A Far Green Country

I wanted to be a filmmaker from a young age. I loved films and the process of filmmaking. I’d read about filmmakers’ careers rising smoothly to the point where they’re regular collaborators with the world’s most successful creatives. Struggling with many issues as a teenager on the autistic spectrum, I imagined a future for myself where my struggles were “worth it”; where I triumphed over my difficulties into a steady-state life of professional success and joyful connections.

Well, after completing a Masters’ degree in film school, I still had a deep-seated sense of social anxiety that drained focus from developing my creative craft. I chased social connections with creatives I admired in Dublin. In hindsight, my behaviour was often fawning. It did lead to moments of candid guidance like when one assured me that the feeling of being “out of depth” never really goes away. Another who revealed their personal struggles through their work assured me that I don’t need to be afraid of what people think of me if I did the same.

Years went by and I was still networking to “build connections” but rarely reached out to people to actually make a film. I had social anxiety around getting a film crew together. There was even an actor who wanted to read my scripts, who has since moved to London for an incredibly successful international career. I never had a script I felt I could send them.

I turned 30 during the pandemic and this was often the age by which filmmakers I’d read about would be acclaimed for their first feature film. I was spending a lot of time at home, even when restrictions were easing. I was coming to terms with a recent diagnosis of C-PTSD, or Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It placed my fawning behaviour in context, as well as how uncomfortable I felt about reaching out for collaborators.

2021 has been a fraught year for me, but it is also the year I finally achieved a long-standing creative ambition of mine to direct a feature-length film. It says so on IMDb. I am now a feature filmmaker, as I long assumed would bring me happiness in life. The journey there has taught me a lot about creativity.

From April to November of this year, I made a documentary out of footage I filmed in New Zealand in January of 2020. This was the trip of a lifetime for me visiting Lord of the Rings filming locations. I was after all, a huge Lord of the Rings fan, and Peter Jackson’s profile as a filmmaker was my aspiration.

Looking back over the footage, I realised there was a story of ups and downs I faced from health challenges. Some days were joyful, while others saw me pushed to my physical limits. There was an actual narrative to the trip, beyond being a tribute to the legacy of the films that made me want to be a filmmaker. It could reflect on what tourism was like in the final months before the pandemic halted travel. It could also serve to illustrate the day-to-day struggles an autistic person can face, now informed by my understanding of how C-PTSD was also taking a physical toll on me.

For these reasons, I released the film on YouTube for free. I feel it is an important time for a story like this to be accessible. Many people explored their own neurodivergence diagnoses over lockdown. Most people have not often seen representations of neurodivergent experience made by the neurodivergent themselves. There are multiple audiences for these stories and YouTube has been a great outlet for mental health content.

This has not been a conventional way of making a debut feature film, but it stands out all the more for it. I have since received feedback from filmmakers I consider far more successful than me. They have told me they are impressed I could film and present a documentary at the same time, while balancing humour and raw vulnerability, as well as editing, colour grading and sound mixing it all by myself, while facing daily health challenges.

One collaborator I did get on board was the composer Lizzie Fitzpatrick. I was a fan of her widely admired band Bitch Falcon, so I couldn’t dare use the “good exposure” line on her. But when I told her I used a temp track from her electronic project Coolgirl, she was intrigued by the opportunity to compose a film soundtrack. What I still appreciate is that she came on board on the strength of a much rougher cut of the film than what has been released publicly. It goes to show that I didn’t need to be afraid of what people would think of me.

Although I have a feature film released publicly now, I find myself in much the same position I was before; considering what project to make next and who I can work with on it. This process is what every filmmaker goes through, at any stage of their career, whatever acclaim they’ve received or resources they can expect to access.

This is why I had my creative ambitions backwards when looking at the likes of Peter Jackson and wanting my career to be how his is. The focus instead for any creative, is what project you can make now with the resources and collaborators available to you. The fears around how it will work out are never eliminated; you act in spite of the fear and without placing expectations on the outcome. I’ve done it enough times now to understand that better.

Art is the alchemy through which you turn the lead in your life into gold. It is not, as I thought, a way of escaping the pain from one’s life, or proving that I am cool to those who excluded me. Art is not about proving yourself, it is about expressing yourself. What I felt I had to express in a distinctive way, was that healing can and should be possible, even with trauma from the past and uncertainty around the future. Now that I have a theme to explore in future work that is what will drive the stories I tell and any success that may or may not come from it.

And that is where the focus should be; not on the fruits I desire, but on the seeds I am planting.